Scholarships are set up by trusts. Often by someone famous or someone old and rich.
They're aimed at a very specific type of person often relating to the trust. ie: Some old rich successful football player is going to set up a full scholarship for an up-in-coming football star etc..
Though there are more general ones aimed at a large group.

ie: Here Iwi (Maori tribes) are rich as fuck and so have set up numerous scholarships for people affiliated with their Iwi.

Students apply for scholarships in high schools if you are eligible. The people in charge of the scholarship then sort through all the candidates and do interviews etc.. to sort out the person who gets their scholarship.

I remember there was a Polish scholarship that if you were Polish you got a full scholarship but because nobody in this country is Polish it hadn't been claimed in like 5 years.

For one, I think the government needs to get out of school loans. It should not be my responsibility to pay for someone's optional education. I'll gladly pay for my kids to go to school, I'll gladly pay for their high school education. Of course, if they wanted to go to college, I'd help them out.

However, you cannot "get rid of" student loans that are government assisted in any way shape or form. You cannot claim bankruptcy on them and I've seen it destroy the lives of many.

The other side to this is that if someone is incapable of making their own decisions and weighing the seriousness and consequences of their education and finances, then they dig their own hole. But the problem is that I do not see people well enough educated to often understand the implications of such things.

My sister is an example of this. One of the verbatim words out of her mouth to me once were exactly as follows: "No one TOLD me we didn't have to do this. I always just thought that's what you do when you get out of school! How was I supposed to know?"

Thing is... "got it" and I went for about a year, quit, paid off my debt and I was done. I have yet to go back, make good money and am doing my own thing. I invest, I work, I play. I never got a degree.

Colleges have very much become a business, so have universities. I think people need to be well enough educated to know what they are getting into, the implications, so on and so forth. Then, they need to be able to do it in an affordable manner, without my tax dollars going to their assistance. I'm fine with the GI bill and things like that. You serve your country, cool, get something back. But if you just graduated high school and you haven't proven yourself to be a decent member of society you shouldn't get the ability to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt like a renob.

(08-12-2012 08:26 PM)earmuffs Wrote: Not everyone has this option, in fact I'd say the majority of people don't have this option.
And not just poor people.

didnt say free ride. help.

but.. true. but does that make it the responsibility of the majority? i am not sure. again. mixed feelings.

It's actually really interesting that you bring this up.
This was one of the questions we had to discuss in my tutorials (an hour long class we have to attended with smaller number of people from the lectures in which we have to go over the previous weeks topic etc..).
Who's responsibility is it that people gain/have the right qualifications.

The three options were (as well as being open for suggestion but really there isn't any other options apart from these three anyway) government (aka how it is now), the people (pay for it ourselves) and an interesting one, employers.

The idea of employers being responsibly being that if an employer wants person X to have Y skills, then they should send person X to university to acquire Y skills.
I mentioned in the class that that is what the navy and army do. They pay for you to go to university to get your engineers degree or whatever.
But the problem I raised (being the only smart one in this class it falls on me more often then not to actually offer a decent talking point that isn't biased in selfishness or "my mom says..") was how doable is this in the private sector?
Like, is it worth companies paying people to go get these qualifications rather then just doing say in-house training.
BUT perhaps if it's not, then maybe there is something wrong with the way we do things.
The other big issue is things like doctor degrees. Hospitals are not gonna pay some employee to get a doctors degree, it's just not gonna happen. And there is a huge shortage as it is of doctors without cutting government funding.

It's a rather large complex issue I think.
But to me I think the current system is good, BUT it needs serious reform. ie: Stop people getting useless fucking degrees.

Those are some very fair points muff. I am required in my current occupation to get certifications on a regular basis. The company does pay for them, they actually will reimburse me for my education as well. However, it must be related to the occupation. I think it works great, for that occupation.

I briefly went to school for computer science (roughly 1 year) and hated it. I paid my tuition and never went back, now I go back for necessary things. I do not see it as entirely necessary to get a full on degree depending on the occupation.

I think the idea of "needing a degree right out of school for a good job" is a huge issue as it has been passed down generation to generation to "think this way" - I am not saying education is bad, but spending tons of money and getting in debt to bounce from degree to degree only to find out you don't like something seems like a useless way to discover what a person wants to do.

I find hunting for a job simply because it pays well does not guarantee a persons satisfaction in life and is an equally poor decision making tool for an occupation.